Everything About Network Vulnerability Assessment
If you’re worried that your company may fall prey to a security breach, you are not alone. Business hacking has become such a pervasive problem that a bill passed in the U.S. to create resources and guidelines to address the issue. The Main Street Cybersecurity Act now requires the federal government to offer more tools to small businesses to prevent and protect themselves against cyber-attack.
While more resources and a government focus on stopping hacking in its tracks that can help small businesses to secure their data from hackers and also from infiltrating their systems. That’s why a business needs to empower themselves with a network vulnerability assessment to identify and resolve their security issues. These tests should be scheduled regularly and follow best practices for such assessments to pinpoint a business security flaw.
What is a Network Vulnerability Assessment?
A network Vulnerability Assessment is a process that helps analyze and review your computer and device networks for security issues. The assessment may expose network vulnerabilities and holes in your security that could leave an open door for hackers. A network vulnerability assessment should even be performed on an ongoing basis as new threats arise and hackers find new ways to interrupt into systems.
Network Vulnerability assessments aren’t always just a “nice to have” type of resource. Depending on your industry, you may be required to perform vulnerability assessments to remain compliant. For example, PCI requires an assessment to ensure that you are protecting a customer’s information and sensitive data.
Vulnerability Assessment Steps
Once your data is organized and you understand the data and IP address you’ll be working with, it’s time to schedule regular network vulnerability scanning. After identifying the vulnerabilities, you need to access the flaws before they harm your business. As soon as you determine how these flaws will impact your business and systems, your IT team can prioritize which to resolve first. The remediation efforts you focus on should also come with an execution plan and timeline.
Vulnerability Assessment Tools
Using the right tool is crucial to vulnerability assessment best practices and can help improve your process. Vulnerability assessment tools are designed to discover which vulnerabilities are present. Businesses can also choose an open-source vulnerability scanner and managers like OpenVAS for their assessments and scanning. OpenVAS claims to be the most advanced Open Source vulnerability scanner and manager with a community that can help answer your questions about vulnerability assessments.
Network Vulnerability Assessment Tasks
Depending on your own network’s vulnerabilities, the results of your scan and process may look different. However, you can focus on these tasks to remove the vulnerabilities:
· Identifying and prioritizing network threats
· Analysing router and WIFI passwords for vulnerabilities
· Reviewing your organization’s network strength against common attacks including Distributed Denial Service (DDoS)
· Analysing your routers, switches, and computers for device security
Penetration Testing
Although vulnerability assessment tools can help identify security flaws, they can’t determine which loopholes can cause damage and which can’t. That’s why penetration tests are crucial to purposefully, but ethically, exploit vulnerabilities, and identify which ones are a threat. Unlike malicious hackers, ethical hackers can empower business for the better to fix their vulnerabilities before they spiral out of control and lead to damage. These hackers are looking for loopholes to make companies safer and systems for their gain.
To know more about vulnerability assessment and penetration testing you can contact TechNEXA Technologies from our contact page. Our experts can help you with the best identification and priortizing network threats.
